How do you calculate the popularity of various programming languages? The TIOBE folks try to rank programming language popularity by searching the Web. The RedMonk team pulls data from GitHub and Stack Overflow. But O’Reilly has a unique method: It measures book sales as an indicator of technology trends. By that measure, at least, Java and…
Why Competing Clouds Outweigh the Network Effect
Last week, the CloudStack controversy questioned whether there can be more than one open source cloud. Evan Prodromou, founder and CEO of StatusNet, says no, arguing that it’s “going to be better for everyone” if there is a single contender for open source cloud computing thanks to network effects.
Microsoft’s $1 Billion AOL Patent Buy: Google Loses, Lawyers Win
Wonder what $1 billion will get you? Depending on your tastes, you can pick up a neat photo app with no business model, or a hefty collection of software patents from a struggling company.
Pending regulatory approval, Microsoft will buy more than 800 patents and related patent applications from AOL for $1.056 billion in cash. Not surprisingly…
Who Wrote OpenStack Essex? A Deep Dive Into Contributions
It’s always interesting to see who really contributes to open source projects. That’s doubly true when it comes to projects that are corporate-driven, because they provide a lot of insight into which companies are driving a project and have a stake in supporting it. Looking at the numbers for OpenStack’s Essex release, it’s clear that only a…
Amazon S3 Showing Signs of Slowing as It Approaches 1 Trillion Objects
If you’ve any doubt that cloud storage is a huge market, Amazon’s numbers ought to be very persuasive. The latest figures from Amazon indicate the company has added about 143 billion objects to S3 in one quarter. But it also looks like Amazon’s growth may be slowing – somewhat.
It’s Not Highlander: There Can Be More Than One Open Source Cloud
The last few days have been, to say the least, interesting for cloud watchers. If you care at all about the open source cloud, it’s been a major week. OpenStack pushed out its Essex release, but not in time to avoid having to share a news cycle with the announcement that Citrix wants to donate CloudStack to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF).
OpenStack Essex Focuses on Being Production-Ready
It’s official. The OpenStack Essex release has hit the wire. The OpenStack 2012.1 release includes two new projects promoted to the core of OpenStack, an Identity Service (Keystone) and OpenStack Dashboard (Horizon), along with a project in “incubation” called Quantum. The phrase around this release is “production-ready.”
Time Traveling with 1940 Census Data
Big data is usually discussed in terms of its applicability to business or scientific research, but it can be valuable for much more. Consider, for instance, the release of the 1940 census data by the U.S. National Archives earlier this week. Hey, they’ve even managed to find Jimmy Hoffa!
Well, they’ve been able to find Hoffa’s record from the…
In an Exploding Web Market, Nginx Gaining Against Apache
Any way you look at it, this month’s Netcraft Web Server Survey has some astounding numbers. The competition between Web servers is always interesting, but more so is the fact that the number of sites surveyed since April 2011 has more than doubled. Netcraft’s April 2012 survey received responses from 676,919,707 sites – more than double the number…
Can Copyleft Clouds Find Contributors?
This morning’s announcement that Citrix would be contributing CloudStack to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is a big win for Apache – and a minor loss for copyleft. With the change, only one open-source cloud infrastructure player (Eucalytpus) is hewing to the copyleft model.
OpenStack, OpenNebula, and soon CloudStack and OpenShift, are…
1000 Genomes Project and AWS: A Startup Opportunity?
Last week, Amazon welcomed the 1000 Genomes Project data to Amazon S3 as part of the Obama administration’s big data initiative (PDF). The initiative is far-reaching and likely to have an impact on a number of businesses. Focusing just on the 1000 Genomes Project, though, I wonder if this might be an opportunity for startups to provide tools or…
More Cloud Turbulence: CloudStack Heads to Apache Foundation
If you don’t like the weather in Missouri, wait 10 minutes – it’ll probably change. Likewise, if you don’t like the way that the Cloud industry is aligned, just give it a little time. It’ll probably change, too. The latest shift? Citrix is set to propose CloudStack to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) as an incubator project.
Let’s take a…
Forensics and Facebook: How Cernam Plans to Collect Social Network Evidence
There’s been a bit of a firestorm lately over employers seeking Facebook passwords. Despite the outrage, employers occasionally have a legitimate need for access to documents in their employees’ social network and online service accounts. Cernam, a company that specializes in digital investigations, is looking to help employers dive into…
Google Adds New Toys to OAuth Playground
Google opened its OAuth 2.0 playground to developers last November with support for Google properties and non-Google APIs with support for OAuth 2.0 draft 10. Since then, the company has added a number of new toys to the OAuth Playground, including support for testing client-side apps, in addition to testing Web-based applications.
In case you…
Google’s Go Programming Language Grows Up: Now What?
Does the world really need another C-ish programming language? Apparently Google thought so in 2009, when it channeled the Ramones and introduced Go. Now the Go team has reached a stable point they’re calling Go 1 and sending it out into the world for “creating reliable products, projects and publications.” Now, what’s the world going to do with…
Trello: Online Collaboration Software at Its Finest
If you’ve seen one Web-based collaboration tool, you’ve seen ’em all, right? That was my thinking, until I started seriously looking at Trello a few weeks ago. Trello takes the drudgery out of collaboration software. It gives users a Web-based workspace that’s as easy to use as a whiteboard and Post-It notes, but full-featured enough for…
Red Hat Sets a Date for OpenShift Source Release
Red Hat is getting set to take the wraps off the source code for OpenShift. The company announced today that it will release the OpenShift code at the Open Cloud Conference to take place in Sunnyvale, Calif., from April 30 through May 3. At the conference Red Hat will provide the code for its Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering, and showing…
Cloud Storage Competition Heats Up With RiakCS
Add Basho to the companies looking to take a chunk of the cloud storage space. Today, the company announced RiakCS, a “multi-tenant, distributed, S3-compatible cloud storage platform” that runs on top of the Riak-distributed database. The question isn’t really whether Basho can cut into Amazon’s business, but how much.
According to J.P. Morgan…
Facebook, Passwords, Employers and a Business Opportunity
Some folks are getting riled up over employers asking job seekers for Facebook passwords, others think it might be OK. Me? I think there’s a business opportunity being overlooked in catering to employers’ concerns about social media.
Monitoring social media is already a business, but that applies to public posts.
PaaS or Fail: Does Elastic Beanstalk Make the Grade as a PaaS?
Earlier this week Amazon added PHP and Git support to Elastic Beanstalk. To me, this looks like Amazon encroaching on PaaS territory and offering features similar to Engine Yard, OpenShift, Heroku, and others. All of which, by the way, host on top of Amazon. But not everyone agrees that Elastic Beanstalk has the necessary ingredients for a PaaS, or…